Pushing the boundaries of biomolecular sensing

If you want to understand astronomy, you need telescopes to observe what you cannot see by just looking into the night sky. In the same way, you need microscopes to understand things too tiny for your eyes to see.

But how can we sense and measure what's happening in the complex environments where biological processes and molecular interactions occur within cells and tissues, which are too small for even microscopes to see? All of them hold critical information about why and how diseases occur and progress.

Researchers need new tools for this kind of study. And to further complicate the challenge, these new tools must often be able to detect multiple unique molecules or processes simultaneously to reveal where those biochemical events happen both in space and time.

This is what the new Delaware Center for Multiscale Biomolecular Sensing (DCMBS) aims to do.

Donald A. Watson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware, is steering the new Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE), with support from a $12.1 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The work will build on UD's strengths in biochemistry, biology, chemistry and engineering by developing a multidisciplinary community focused on biomolecular sensing, advancing the science of how molecular and cellular phenomena impact human health, and establishing UD as a leading research hub in this field.

The grant can be extended twice, for a total of 15 years, with each phase including multiple principal investigators.

Biomolecular sensing is all about detecting and measuring the biochemical processes that occur within cells as well as between cells and tissues, and understanding how those events impact the development and progression of diseases. Advancing our understanding of these processes across scales, from the molecular scale to the entire organism, could lead to new treatments and technologies related to disorders such as cardiovascular disease, dementia and chronic pain.